A microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a device that converts chemical energy of a substrate as an electron donor into electrical energy using microorganisms as a catalyst.
Meanwhile, most costs for processing contaminated water such as drain water, waste water, etc., are consumed by oxygen aeration and disposal of residual sludge. Since an oxygen aeration system requires electrical energy consumption that increases according to an object to be processed, and aerobic microorganisms constituting a large amount of residual sludge are generated when the contaminated water is processed through the oxygen aeration, costs for processing residual sludge are also increased. In order to solve this problem, research on processing contaminated water using microbial fuel cells is being conducted.
However, since microbial fuel cells are still being researched as a device for use in experiments in laboratories, they must be largely improved to be directly applied to contaminated waters.